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The Healer's Mind
Whenever you are present as the Healer of
yourself,
you are poised to invoke the wholeness principle
of Consciousness
in the service of Sentience.
This means that what will be happening in your conscious mind
will be loving and supportive of whatever you are feeling
in the moment.
For instance, if there is pain, you'll focus your attention
on the pain,
and then find where it centers in your body.
This is radically different
than what our conditioned mind has had us doing automatically
-either finding a way of subduing the pain or escaping it
altogether.
One of the deepest and most compelling mandates
of human conditioning has been:
"Seek pleasure and avoid pain."
This conditioning has been so pervasive
that it seemed to be completely beneficial and rational.
However, while seeking pleasure makes good sense,
avoiding pain has turned out to very problematic.
When we avoid pain,
we cut ourselves off from a loving connection
with the part of ourselves that is feeling the pain.
This causes at least temporary fragmentation,
and makes it impossible for us to heal the root cause of the
pain.
The solution is to train our minds to do something extraordinary,
to turn and face the pain with loving acceptance of its existence
here now, just as it is. With this loving attention, and the
inner resources necessary
for bringing real help to the hurting part of ourselves,
true healing is finally possible.
The Healer's Tools section of the manual
has many practices and tips
about how to make it much quicker and easier
to bring loving acceptance to the parts of yourself that are
experiencing pain.
Before going there, let's do a quick experiment to explore
what the Healer's mind learns to do differently than ordinary
mind:
Pause for a moment after reading this sentence
and feel the support of the chair under you.
As soon as you are paying attention to the
sensations in your body
where you are touching the chair,
take a moment to curl your toes, and pause for a few seconds
with them curled.
Now relax your toes and pause while you feel
deeply into the sense of relaxation...
You may feel, among other possibilities,
a radiating or perhaps tingling sensation.
What you have just done
is intentionally focus your attention on feeling sensations.
This is the quintessential movement
that distinguishes the Healer's mind from ordinary mind
-to refocus conscious attention from mind and thinking
to sentience and feeling.
The Healer's Attention
The single most powerful faculty of
the human mind is
the conscious use of attention.
Almost always, our attention is directed
and focused
by forces outside of our conscious awareness.
Events in the outer world grab our attention.
For instance in this moment
your attention may be focused on these words you are reading.
Or if you look up from reading, you may see
something that triggers a thought.
For an instant your attention was on what you saw,
and then it was quickly redirected to the thought that was
triggered by seeing it.
Perhaps it was the word for the object, its name;
or maybe it was a short story about it, "That's the photograph
of...."
Typically, thoughts trigger other thoughts
and attention dutifully follows the train of thoughts
until another event, a feeling or something else grabs or
hooks your attention,
and so it goes.
All of the practices and exercises
in this manual have the common feature
of helping train the Healer's mind
to change the old, conditioned habits
of attention
by bringing the faculty of attention itself
under the conscious control of the Healer.
We cannot truly be here for ourselves
until we can assume the authority
of consciously choosing for ourselves
what we pay attention to.
The conditioning that has held habits
of attention and imprints in place
is very powerful.
And yet it easily lets go when we take control of our own
attention.
One common unconscious
habit of attention has been
to ignore or dismiss bodily sensations while reading.
Another more problematic habit of attention
is to escape from unwanted feelings and sensations
by paying attention to thoughts instead.
The Healer's attention is
focused
on feelings and sensations
because that's where the healing is needed.
And ironically it's the attention itself
that heals.
[2013:
"attention" is not enough.
Vibrating the feeling,
i.e.. moving, breathing, sounding it physically
is the first and last step to healing.
This is not only Godchannel's info,
it is my most outstanding, outrageous experience!]
Healing happens
when our loving attention falls upon a previously unwanted
or ignored feeling.
In the deeper layers of ourselves as Beings,
a circle completes between the Universal
Feminine,
the root of the feeling
and the Universal Masculine,
the attentive lover of the feeling.
In this way
humans and Deity work, play and dance together collaboratively
to heal themselves
-and in the process, Creation itself.
Directing and Focusing Attention
A camera can be a useful metaphor for the
mind's faculty of attention.
We can consciously direct our attention and adjust the focus
of attention,
just as we can change the camera angle and adjust the focus
of the lens.
Attention can be directed either inside of self or outside,
and it can be adjusted to anywhere from laser sharp to soft
and diffuse.
A wide-angle focus allows us to take in the larger picture,
and a sharply focused attention allows us to study something
specific in detail.
Although we have always had the ability
to consciously direct and focus our attention,
this has almost always been an automatic, unconscious process.
Because of the mind's conditioning,
it's been happening without us even realizing we had a choice.
With conscious awareness of our attention comes the possibility
of consciously moving attention from the thoughts and ideas
of mind
toward the feelings and sensations beneath those thoughts.
Also like a camera lens,
we can focus our attention either on what is in the foreground
of awareness
or what's in the background.
As conscious awareness fades into the background,
it goes beyond the range of the lens of attention and becomes
unconscious.
For the Healer and explorer,
the most interesting and helpful aspects of conscious awareness
are found in the deep background of awareness
and in the layers of the unconscious immediately below conscious
awareness,
often referred to as the 'subconscious.'
What happens in our inner process has,
for the most part,
remained undetected by our conscious awareness,
or at best kept in the deep background of awareness.
However, as the Healer working to improve our inner process,
we want to refocus our attention on the elements of process
formerly relegated to the background.
For instance, in ordinary consciousness
the words you are reading and their associated thoughts are
in the foreground,
and the way your body feels in the
chair is in the background.
As an experiment,
you can continue reading and paying attention to the words
and their meanings
while also feeling whatever bodily sensations are available
to feel in the moment.
This will likely involve reading more slowly for the same
level of comprehension
-while at the same time feeling your
body as you read.
Another way to experience refocusing
the lens of attention
is to stop reading for a moment,
and when you do -
listen to what your mind says about what your body has been
feeling.
Try this now if you like.
You probably heard something like,
"I'm feeling _____," or "My _____ feels _____."
The main point is that no matter what your mind said, it was
a thought.
By refocusing attention here,
we were able to see that it was just that, a thought;
and that it or a similar thought was in the background
until you stopped to become aware of it.
You consciously refocused attention to observe the thought
rather than unconsciously believing it
or automatically identifying with it.
Identity and Attention
Identification is ordinarily a subtle
unconscious process.
Identification happens
whenever our attention is hooked by something occurring inside
of us.
In the ordinary mind,
the perception of a thought is experienced unconsciously as
identification with it.
In other words, ordinarily there is no awareness of having
a thought or of observing it, only a sense of being the thought.
For instance,
"I am having a thought
that I should be doing something else right now,"
is ordinarily replaced by the (likely untrue) realization,
"I should be doing something else right now."
Another way of saying this is
that within the conditioning
of the ordinary mind,
we have believed our thoughts.
We have unconsciously, automatically believed
that what we think is right and correct, beyond question.
And of course this is almost never true.
Almost all thoughts arise out of
habitual, conditioned patterns
that have not been updated
since they were first established long ago-in childhood or
earlier.
This is because
one of the habitual, conditioned patterns of the ordinary
mind
has been to unconsciously identify with our thoughts.
Whether the thought is true or not has almost always gone
unquestioned.
The quick and easy solution to the
illusions and delusions
created by unobserved, unquestioned thoughts
is to consciously move our point of view from identification
with the thought,
and instead become the observer of the thought.
When we are not our thoughts we have the
power to question them.
"Is it true
that I should be doing something else right now?"
can be a good entry
to a more present and real identity as the Healer of myself,
the 'me' who observes and questions my thinking.
The Observer
In the Healer's mind attention continually
moves to the position of observer.
Only when we become observant of ourselves and our process
do we have the power to heal.
In fact, it's the ability to observe thoughts and feelings
that distinguishes you the Healer from the other parts of
yourself.
[2013-
again: "attention" is not enough.
Vibrating the feeling,
i.e.. moving, breathing, sounding it physically
is the first and last step to healing.
This is not only Godchannel's info,
it is my most outstanding, outrageous experience!]
When the Healer hears the buzzer that
signals a part of self is hurting,
you are able to look around to see who is asking for attention.
The quickest and easiest way to do
this is to find
where in your body you feel the feeling,
and come into observance of the feeling by feeling into it.
The same can be done with thoughts.
Conditioning has programmed us so that when a thought hooks
our attention,
we become attached to it as if we are entranced by it.
In fact, thoughts can easily create a 'spell' that takes us
away from ourselves
and brings us into alliance with the thought,
almost always to the point that we identity with it as in,
"my thought," or "I think..."
At an unconscious level this ultimately
means
"I believe_______, and therefore it's true."
In most of us this line of faulty unconscious
reasoning has gone to
"I am my thought," or rather, "My thought is
me."
For example, without any observation or questioning,
"Life is hard,"
can very easily go from a thought to a belief,
and become an unquestioned 'fact' with a profound influence
on how my life goes.
Part of my identity is now a person whose life is hard.
In normal consciousness, our sense of identity rides along
with the perceived inner phenomena of the mind and body,
including the emotional body.
Thoughts, feelings and sensations have captured our attention.
And with that they have captured our identity.
Observing the thought, feeling or sensation
with curiosity
immediately breaks the spell.
This is because you, who are observing this inner phenomenon,
are experiencing the thought, feeling or sensation from outside
of it.
You are not in it or identified with it, you are observing
it.
Now your point of attention is as the
observer of an aspect of a part of yourself.
This is where the Healer's mind begins.
When your conscious attention has this self-observing point
of view,
you are in the position of the Healer,
the one who can heal all the rest of you.
And since you, the Healer are observing
another part that's hurting,
you are at once both the Healer and the part that is being
healed.
The specific healing medicine that the Healer brings in this
work
is loving acceptance.
Practicing observing ourselves
and loving what we observe in ourselves
is part of every practice in this manual.
For instance, when the Healer rescues
the child from a past trauma,
the Healer unconditionally loves the child,
just as she or he is in the moment without having to change
in any way.
And the Healer's motive in coming to help the child in pain
is not only to stop the pain and so we can feel 'good' again.
The Healer's motive is love.
The Healer wants to find and reclaim
this previously lost part of self
so you can be reunited within,
so you can be more whole,
so you can be more of who you truly are.
Through developing the Healer's skills and
using the Healer's tools
we get better and better at doing this unusual and amazing
thing
-loving ourselves.
When our minds are able
to give our open, honest complete and unconditional loving
acceptance
to the darkest, stinkiest, most desperate and depraved parts
of ourselves
we know we have the right medicine.
We have a loving mind. We have the Healer's mind.
Index
of Articles
Healing to Wholeness
PO Box 633, San Anselmo, CA 94979
415-924-8800 ~ 800-449-4422
info@HealingToWholeness.com
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